Today, individuals frequently use word processors, text editors, web development tools and other digital media applications to create and edit web pages, visual designs for content, user interface designs (UX), web documents, and other work product. In connection with designing a document layout and editing the layout, users may want to use representative data to populate the design and thereby get a preview of how the document design will appear when completed. Traditionally, developers utilize an offline set of placeholder data for design previews. Unfortunately, the placeholder data may not accurately reflect “real-word” data for which the document design is created. Additionally, the developer may have to individually link each element of the design to selected items of the placeholder data on an element-by element basis. Manual processes for linking data to the design elements are feasible for simple designs, but become complicated and tedious for sophisticated designs such as dynamic visual designs that include large numbers of elements and structured arrangements of repeating elements. Thus, not only do existing techniques for linking data to a visual design require considerable effort on the part of the users, using offline placeholder data may be complicated, time consuming, and inaccurate.